Meaningless Conversation Quotes

I no longer have the energy for meaningless friendships, forced interactions or unnecessary conversations. If we don’t vibrate on the same frequency there’s just no reason for us to waste our time. I’d rather have no one and wait for substance than to not feel someone and fake the funk.

It was a relationship, and also not a relationship. Each of our gestures felt spontaneous, and if from the outside we resembled a couple, that was an interesting coincidence for us. We developed a joke about it, which was meaningless to everyone including ourselves: what is a friend? we would say humorously. What is a conversation?

The large majority of teenagers who attend Higgs are soulless, conformist idiots. I have successfully integrated myself into a small group of girls who I consider to be “good people,” but sometimes I still feel that I might be the only person with a consciousness, like a video game protagonist, and everyone else are computer-generated extras who have only a select few actions, such as “initiate meaningless conversation” and “hug.

Work pressures, multitasking, social media, news updates, multiplicities of entertainment sources—these all induce us to become lost in thoughts, frantic activities, gadgets, meaningless conversations. We are caught up in pursuits of all kinds that draw us on not because they are necessary or inspiring or uplifting, or because they enrich or add meaning to our lives, but simply because they obliterate the present.

And still the strange meaningless conversations continue, and I wonder more and more at the fabric which nets the world together, so that anything which I do finally incubate out of my system into words will quite certainly be about solitude. Solitude and the desirability of it, if one is to achieve anything like continuity in life, is the one idea I find in the resounding vacancy which is my head.

All the inane, meaningless noises people make that pass for intelligent conversation. They might as well be pigs grunting in the pen. (92)

Our world is filled with meaningless conversations. It is an honour to participate in one that is not.

It will be seen that, as used, the word ‘Fascism’ is almost entirely meaningless. In conversation, of course, it is used even more wildly than in print. I have heard it applied to farmers, shopkeepers, Social Credit, corporal punishment, fox-hunting, bull-fighting, the 1922 Committee, the 1941 Committee, Kipling, Gandhi, Chiang Kai-Shek, homosexuality, Priestley's broadcasts, Youth Hostels, astrology, women, dogs and I do not know what else.

Things must be negative but not too negative. Hopelessness, despair—these drive us to do nothing. Pity, empathy—those drive us to do something, like get up from our computers to act. But anger, fear, excitement, or laughter—these drive us to spread. They drive us to do something that makes us feel as if we are doing something, when in reality we are only contributing to what is probably a superficial and utterly meaningless conversation.

A sense of humor is a serious business; and it isn't funny, not having one. Watch the humorless closely: the cocked and furtive way they monitor all conversation, their flashes of panic as irony or exaggeration eludes them, the relief with which they submit to the meaningless babble of unanimous laughter. The humorless can programme themselves to relish situations of human farce or slapstick — and that's about it. They are handicapped in the head, or mentally 'challenged', as Americans say (euphemism itself being a denial of humour). The trouble is that the challenge wins, every time, hands down. The humorless have no idea what is going on and can't make sense of anything at all.

We developed a joke about it, which was meaningless to everyone including ourselves: what is a friend? we would say humorously. What is a conversation?

I’m such a negative person, and always have been. Was I born that way? I don’t know. I am constantly disgusted by reality, horrified and afraid. I cling desperately to the few things that give me some solace, that make me feel good. I hate most of humanity. Though I might be very fond of particular individuals, humanity in general fills me with contempt and despair. I hate most of what passes for civilization. I hate the modern world. For one thing there are just too Goddamn many people. I hate the hordes, the crowds in their vast cities, with all their hateful vehicles, their noise and their constant meaningless comings and goings. I hate cars. I hate modern architecture. Every building built after 1955 should be torn down! I despise modern music. Words cannot express how much it gets on my nerves – the false, pretentious, smug assertiveness of it. I hate business, having to deal with money. Money is one of the most hateful inventions of the human race. I hate the commodity culture, in which everything is bought and sold. No stone is left unturned. I hate the mass media, and how passively people suck up to it. I hate having to get up in the morning and face another day of this insanity. I hate having to eat, shit, maintain the body – I hate my body. The thought of my internal functions, the organs, digestion, the brain, the nervous system, horrify me. Nature is horrible. It’s not cute and loveable. It’s kill or be killed. It’s very dangerous out there. The natural world is filled with scary, murderous creatures and forces. I hate the whole way that nature functions. Sex is especially hateful and horrifying, the male penetrating the female, his dick goes into her hole, she’s impregnated, another being grows inside her, and then she must go through a painful ordeal as the new being pushes out of her, only to repeat the whole process in time. Reproduction – what could be more existentially repulsive? How I hate the courting ritual. I was always repelled by my own sex drive, which in my youth never left me alone. I was constantly driven by frustrated desires to do bizarre and unacceptable things with and to women. My soul was in constant conflict about it. I never was able to resolve it. Old age is the only relief. I hate the way the human psyche works, the way we are traumatized and stupidly imprinted in early childhood and have to spend the rest of our lives trying to overcome these infantile mental fixations. And we never ever fully succeed in this endeavor. I hate organized religions. I hate governments. It’s all a lot of power games played out by ambition-driven people, and foisted on the weak, the poor, and on children. Most humans are bullies. Adults pick on children. Older children pick on younger children. Men bully women. The rich bully the poor. People love to dominate. I hate the way humans worship power – one of the most disgusting of all human traits. I hate the human tendency towards revenge and vindictiveness. I hate the way humans are constantly trying to trick and deceive one another, to swindle, to cheat, and take unfair advantage of the innocent, the naïve and the ignorant. I hate the vacuous, false, banal conversation that goes on among people. Sometimes I feel suffocated; I want to flee from it. For me, to be human is, for the most part, to hate what I am. When I suddenly realize that I am one of them, I want to scream in horror.

That’s the difference, a true friend is happy for you no matter what you do and what you have and quite frankly I didn’t have the time for meaningless conversations or friendships that drained me of my energy.

Natural,my ass! The worst poison known to man comes from a tree frog in South America. You cannot imagine how small an amount would be necessary to kill you.and it's natural.Calling something NATURAL is a MEANINGLESS MARKETING PLOY." "All right,calm down! Maybe I like alternative medicine because it's been in use for more than six thousand years.After all that time,they have to know what they're doing." "You mean the wacky idea that somehow in the distant past people had more scientific wisdom than they do today?That's both crazy and counterintuitive.Six thousand years ago people thought thunder was a bunch of gods moving around furniture." -Conversation btw Dr.Jack Stapleton and Vinnie

If it’s all meaningless then why are we discussing that it’s all meaningless, for such a conversation is of itself meaningless. So, maybe the fact that we’re having a meaningless conversation about life being meaningless evidences that it’s not.

Good evening.” “And a good evening to you.” The duke shot them all a look of unfettered annoyance. “I believe we have thoroughly established that the evening is a good one. Let us move past the polite posturing and on to the meaningless conversation.

In the middle of a conversation, someone says to me out of the blue: "I wish you luck." I am astonished; but later I realize that these words connect up with his thoughts about me. And now they do not strike me as meaningless any more.

On my own, the ordinariness of the moment is almost too much to stand. I glance around the restaurant, taking in the faces of the waiters, the customers. Two dozen noisy conversations mixing into a kind of meaningless roar. I think, What if you people knew what I knew?

I had learned that most people preferred meaningless paintings to meaningful conversations, and as a result, I struggled to connect with others.

I’ve never been very good at socializing. Truth be told, I'd rather stand in a corner alone than engage in meaningless conversation with people I don't even know or care about.

I see things in windows and I say to myself that I want them. I want them because I want to belong. I want to be liked by more people, I want to be held in higher regard than others. I want to feel valued, so I say to myself to watch certain shows. I watch certain shows on the television so I can participate in dialogues and conversations and debates with people who want the same things I want. I want to dress a certain way so certain groups of people are forced to be attracted to me. I want to do my hair a certain way with certain styling products and particular combs and methods so that I can fit in with the In-Crowd. I want to spend hours upon hours at the gym, stuffing my body with what scientists are calling 'superfoods', so that I can be loved and envied by everyone around me. I want to become an icon on someone's mantle. I want to work meaningless jobs so that I can fill my wallet and parentally-advised bank accounts with monetary potential. I want to believe what's on the news so that I can feel normal along with the rest of forever. I want to listen to the Top Ten on Q102, and roll my windows down so others can hear it and see that I am listening to it, and enjoying it. I want to go to church every Sunday, and pray every other day. I want to believe that what I do is for the promise of a peaceful afterlife. I want rewards for my 'good' deeds. I want acknowledgment and praise. And I want people to know that I put out that fire. I want people to know that I support the war effort. I want people to know that I volunteer to save lives. I want to be seen and heard and pointed at with love. I want to read my name in the history books during a future full of clones exactly like me. The mirror, I've noticed, is almost always positioned above the sink. Though the sink offers more depth than a mirror, and mirror is only able to reflect, the sink is held in lower regard. Lower still is the toilet, and thought it offers even more depth than the sink, we piss and shit in it. I want these kind of architectural details to be paralleled in my every day life. I want to care more about my reflection, and less about my cleanliness. I want to be seen as someone who lives externally, and never internally, unless I am able to lock the door behind me. I want these things, because if I didn't, I would be dead in the mirrors of those around me. I would be nothing. I would be an example. Sunken, and easily washed away.

All great conversions are born from the sudden revelation of life's meaninglessness. Nothing could be more moving or more impressive than this sudden apprehension of the void of existence.

When I started everything, and by everything, I mean life, suicide was a joke. If I have to ride in that car with you, I'll slash my wrists with a butter knife. It was as real as a unicorn. No, less than that. It was as real as the explosion around an animated coyote. A hundred thousand people threaten to kill themselves every day and make a hundred thousand other people laugh, because like a cartoon, it's funny and meaningless. Gone even before you turn off the TV. Then it was a disease. Something other people got, if they lived someplace dirty enough to get the infection under their nails. It was not a pleasant dinner table conversation, Cole, and like the flu, it only killed the weak. If you'd been exposed, you didn't talk about it. Wouldn't want to put other people off their feed. It wasn't until high school that it became a possibility. Not an immediate one, not like It is a possibility I will download this album because the guitar is so sick it makes me want to dance, but possibility in the way that some people said when they grew up, they might be a fireman or an astronaut or a CPA who works late every single weekend while his wife has an affair with the guy who drives the DHL truck. It became a possibility like Maybe when I grow up, I will be dead.

He knew very well that the great majority of human conversation is meaningless. A man can get through most of his days on stock answers to stock questions, he thought. Once he catches onto the game, he can manage with an assortment of grunts. This would not be so if people listened to each other, but they don't. They know that no one is going to say anything moving and important to them at that very moment. Anything important will be announced in the newspapers and reprinted for those who missed it. No one really wants to know how his neighbor is feeling, but he asks him anyway, because it is polite, and because he knows that his neighbor certainly will not tell him how he feels. What this woman and I say to each other is not important. It is the simple making of sounds that pleases us.

What happened? It took Gibbon six volumes to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, so I shan’t embark on that. But thinking about this almost incredible episode does tell one something about the nature of civilisation. It shows that however complex and solid it seems, it is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed. 

What are its enemies?
 
Well, first of all fear — fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague and famine, that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees or even planning next year’s crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren’t question anything or change anything. The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence. And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity. 

There is a poem by the modern Greek poet, Cavafy, in which he imagines the people of an antique town like Alexandria waiting every day for the barbarians to come and sack the city. Finally the barbarians move off somewhere else and the city is saved; but the people are disappointed — it would have been better than nothing. Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity—

What civilization needs:

confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers. The way in which the stones of the Pont du Gard are laid is not only a triumph of technical skill, but shows a vigorous belief in law and discipline. Vigour, energy, vitality: all the civilisations—or civilising epochs—have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversations and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation, but they are not what make a civilisation, and a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid.

She understood, I think, that most of what people said was meaningless. That people spoke to fill the silence or pass the time; that, despite our mastery of words and our ability to put them together in infinitely varied ways, most of us struggled to say what we really meant. Maude filtered conversation like a prism filters light. She broke it down so that each phrase could be understood as an articulation of something singular.

I have successfully integrated myself into a small group of girls who I consider to be "good people", but sometimes I still feel that I might be the only person with a consciousness, like a video game protagonist, and everyone else is a computer-generated extra with only a select few actions, such as "initiate meaningless conversation" and "hug".

I never came into the church as a person who was being taught. I came in on my knees. That is the only way in. When people start praying they need truths; that’s all. You don’t come into the Church by ideas and concepts, and you cannot leave by mere disagreement. It has to be a loss of faith, a loss of participation. You can tell when people leave the Church: they have quit praying. Actively relating to the Church's prayer and sacraments is not done through ideas. Any Catholic today who has an intellectual disagreement with the Church has an illusion. You cannot have an intellectual disagreement with the Church: that's meaningless. The Church is not an intellectual institution. It is a superhuman institution.

Instead of engaging in meaningless conversation and attempting to find out who Justice was, Daniel tapped into his brain and searched for his vampire memories. He saw various iterations of him torturing Carla, and then a scene of Carla and Drew getting revenge, George Washington Carver style, all before Justice could get a piece of buttered toast in his mouth.

Meaning is something we ascribe to things in order to understand them. Reality itself is meaningless. Once this jagged, little pill digests within us, it unlocks a beautiful gift: free will.

We must not even evade it, as the Indians do, by myths and meaningless words, such as reabsorption in Brahman, or the Nirvana of the Buddhists. On the contrary, we freely acknowledge that what remains after the complete abolition of the will is, for all who are still full of the will, assuredly nothing. But also conversely, to those in whom the will has turned and denied itself, this very real world with all its suns and galaxies, is—nothing

Don't think your testimony is meaningless if you didn't have a dramatic conversion. Every conversion cost the same amount of Christ's blood shed on the cross. Yours is just as meaningful as the most dramatic conversion ever told.

In 90% of cases, you can start with one of the two most effective ways to open a speech: ask a question or start with a story. Our brain doesn’t remember what we hear. It remembers only what we “see” or imagine while we listen. You can remember stories. Everything else is quickly forgotten. Smell is the most powerful sense out of 4 to immerse audience members into a scene. Every sentence either helps to drive your point home, or it detracts from clarity. There is no middle point. If you don’t have a foundational phrase in your speech, it means that your message is not clear enough to you, and if it’s not clear to you, there is no way it will be clear to your audience. Share your failures first. Show your audience members that you are not any better, smarter or more talented than they are. You are not an actor, you are a speaker. The main skill of an actor is to play a role; to be someone else. Your main skill as a speaker is to be yourself. People will forgive you for anything except for being boring. Speaking without passion is boring. If you are not excited about what you are talking about, how can you expect your audience to be excited? Never hide behind a lectern or a table. Your audience needs to see 100% of your body. Speak slowly and people will consider you to be a thoughtful and clever person. Leaders don’t talk much, but each word holds a lot of meaning and value. You always speak to only one person. Have a conversation directly with one person, look him or her in the eye. After you have logically completed one idea, which usually is 10-20 seconds, scan the audience and then stop your eyes on another person. Repeat this process again. Cover the entire room with eye contact. When you scan the audience and pick people for eye contact, pick positive people more often. When you pause, your audience thinks about your message and reflects. Pausing builds an audiences’ confidence. If you don’t pause, your audience doesn’t have time to digest what you've told them and hence, they will not remember a word of what you've said. Pause before and after you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. After you make an important point and stand still. During this pause, people think about your words and your message sinks in. Speakers use filler words when they don’t know what to say, but they feel uncomfortable with silence. Have you ever seen a speaker who went on stage with a piece of paper and notes? Have you ever been one of these speakers? When people see you with paper in your hands, they instantly think, “This speaker is not sincere. He has a script and will talk according to the script.” The best speeches are not written, they are rewritten. Bad speakers create a 10 minutes speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Great speakers create a 5 minute speech and deliver it in 7 minutes. Explain your ideas in a simple manner, so that the average 12-year-old child can understand the concept. Good speakers and experts can always explain the most complex ideas with very simple words. Stories evoke emotions. Factual information conveys logic. Emotions are far more important in a speech than logic. If you're considering whether to use statistics or a story, use a story. PowerPoint is for pictures not for words. Use as few words on the slide as possible. Never learn your speech word for word. Just rehearse it enough times to internalize the flow. If you watch a video of your speech, you can triple the pace of your development as a speaker. Make videos a habit. Meaningless words and clichés neither convey value nor information. Avoid them. Never apologize on stage. If people need to put in a lot of effort to understand you they simply won’t listen. On the other hand if you use very simple language you will connect with the audience and your speech will be remembered.

The sense of growing panic, the feeling that gibberish is being passed off as coherent conversation, the fear that the world is engaged in meaningless discourse masquerading as meaningful exchange—these are the blurry states individuals with ADD negotiate each day.

She was so unused to conversation in the accepted sense that most of her spoken words were almost meaningless. They were a gesture, like that of a hostess arranging loose covers on the furniture of her room in order to assure herself that everything was prepared for her guests.

Things must be negative but not too negative. Hopelessness, despair—these drive us to do nothing. Pity, empathy—those drive us to do something, like get up from our computers to act. But anger, fear, excitement, or laughter—these drive us to spread. They drive us to do something that makes us feel as if we are doing something, when in reality we are only contributing to what is probably a superficial and utterly meaningless conversation. Online games and apps operate on the same principles and exploit the same impulses: be consuming without frustrating, manipulative without revealing the strings.

A person functioning exclusively in the Cartesian mode may be free from manifest assumptions but cannot be considered mentally healthy. Such individuals typically lead ego-centered, competitive, goal-oriented lives. They tend to be unable to derive satisfaction from ordinary activities in everyday life and can become alienated from their inner world. For people whose existence is dominated by this mode of experience no level of wealth, power, or fame will bring genuine satisfaction. They become infused with a sense of meaninglessness, futility, and even absurdity that no amount of external success can dispel.

She knew what bothered her at the store. It was the sort of thing she wouldn’t try to tell Richard. It was that the store intensified things that had always bothered her, as long as she could remember. It was the waste actions, the meaningless chores that seemed to keep her from doing what she wanted to do, might have done—and here it was the complicated procedures with money bags, coat checkings, and time clocks that kept people even from serving the store as efficiently as they might—the sense that everyone was incommunicado with everyone else and living on an entirely wrong plane, so that the meaning, the message, the love, or whatever it was that each life contained, never could find its expression. It reminded her of conversations at tables, on sofas, with people whose words seemed to hover over dead, unstirrable things, who never touched a string that played. And when one tried to touch a live string, looked at one with faces as masked as ever, making a remark so perfect in its banality that one could not even believe it might be subterfuge. And the loneliness, augmented by the fact one saw within the store the same faces day after day, the few faces one might have spoken to and never did, or never could. Not like the face on the passing bus that seems to speak, that is seen once and at least is gone forever.

I am constantly mystified by what John ends up remembering… I just don’t understand why he’s able to hang on to information like that, while so many other more important memories evaporate. Then again, I suppose so much of what stays with us is often insignificant. The memories we take to the ends of our lives have no real rhyme or reason, especially when you think of the endless things that you do over the course of a day, a week, a month, a year, a lifetime. All the cups of coffee, hand-washings, changes of clothes, lunches, goings to the bathroom, headaches, naps, walks to school, trips to the grocery store, conversations about the weather—all the things so unimportant they should be immediately forgotten. Yet they aren’t. I often think of the Chinese red bathrobe I had when I was twenty-seven years old; the sound of our first cat Charlie’s feet on the linoleum of our old house; the hot rarefied air around aluminum pot the moment before the kernels of popcorn burst open. I think of these things as often as I think about getting married or giving birth or the end of the Second World War. What is truly amazing is that before you know it, sixty years go by and you can remember maybe eight or nine important events, along with a thousand meaningless ones. How can that be? You want to think there’s a pattern to it all because it makes you feel better, gives you some sense of a reason why we’re here, but there really isn’t any. People look for God in these patterns, these reasons, but only because they don’t know where else to look. Things happen to us: some of it important, most of it not, and a little of it stays with us till the end. What stays after that? I’ll be damned if I know. (pp.174-175)

The repetitions, meaningless expressions, stammers, and nonsensical monosyllables with which we express hesitation, along with the clichés and banalities that constitute so much of everyday conversation, cannot and should not be used when our characters are talking. Rather, they should speak more fluently than we do, with greater economy and certitude.

October first it was, fifteen past eight. For twenty minutes my heart was ringing, my soul was singing. Because he was typing on the other side. Just the hi, and hahaha. Silly, meaningless conversation, he didn’t even remember. That was my happiest twenty minutes. I stepped out of my house, got a haircut, I thought he’d like. After three days when my face was fine, I scrolled through his page, looked for the things he liked. Then I made a list of things to do, French class, swimming class, aerobics, and a road trip on November nineteen. On October first, fifteen past eight. My heart was ringing, my soul was singing because he wasn’t just typing on the other side. He was writing on my heart with a permanent marker, in pink.

It was the pointless actions, the meaningless chores that seemed to keep her from doing what she wanted to do, might have done – and here it was the complicated procedures with moneybags, coat checkings, and time clocks that kept people even from serving the store as efficiently as they might – the sense that everyone was incommunicado with everyone else and living on an entirely wrong plane, so that the meaning, the message, the love, or whatever it was that each life contained, never could find its expression. It reminded her of conversations at tables, on sofas, with people whose words seemed to hover over dead, unstirrable things, who never touched a string that played. And when one tried to touch a live string, looked at one with faces as masked as ever, making a remark so perfect in its banality that one could not even believe it might be subterfuge. And the loneliness, augmented by the fact one saw within the store the same faces day after day, the few faces one might have spoken to and never did, or never could. Not like the face on the passing bus that seems to speak, that is seen once and at least is gone for ever. She

In fact, if one has not the imagination to create characters, to knit plots, it does not good to jot down fragments of life and conversation, for alone they are disjointed and meaningless. It is only when these bits are woven into an artistic whole, with a frame of reference, that they become meaning-ful and worthy of more than a cursory glance. Therefore, think and work, think and work.

It's a long day, isn't it?' he said. 'Yes,' I replied. There are many such statements in factory conversation, to which the answer is always yes, because they are not so much statements of opinion or fact as they are expressions of a kind of unity. It might be technically correct to reply, 'Today is exactly the same length as yesterday,' or 'You cannot reasonably say that the gauge is wrong,' or 'The manager works very hard,' or 'But it would be impossible to have intercourse in the office in the lunch break' - but it would definitely not be polite. The proper answer in all cases is 'Yes, you are right,' for such is the convention, and no purpose is served by going against it. I remember, years ago, a very young man who suddenly took it into his head to refuse to say 'Good morning' to everyone in the customary way. He said that it was meaningless because everyone knew that it wasn't a good morning at all because they were all at work, and that t was hypocrisy, too, to wish people a good morning when you knew you'd be sneering and carping at them behind their backs before the teabreak had started. Of course he was technically right - but he nearly had a nervous breakdown, and finished up on his knees begging people to say good morning to him. He had to leave, and I never did hear what became of him.

Another time we were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey ther faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious 'Yes' in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of dawning morning in Bavaria. 'Et lux in tenebris lucet' - and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.

A sudden realization flashed in her mind. No one else's opinion mattered. It was so simple, one of those things a consoling parent might say, and yet it contained a fundamental truth. The entire world could believe in Hazel's greatness but their faith was meaningless if she didn't believe it herself. Conversely, the world could dismiss her ambitions, but it didn't matter as long as Hazel believed in their possibility. Greatness not only started with her, it could not begin anywhere else.

Without having to think about it, I knew Julian and Zav were sitting in the front seats and Sasha was in the back. I could imagine her leaning forward from time to time, asking for a joke to be repeated or pointing out some funny road sign. Trying to campaign for her own existence, before finally giving up and lying back on the seat. Letting their conversation thicken into meaningless noise while she watched the road, the passing orchards. The branches flashing with the silver ties that kept away birds. —

[G]rey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious 'Yes' in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose.

I have outgrown many things. I have outgrown relatives who gladly offer criticism but not support. I have outgrown my need to meet my family's unrealistic expectations of me. I have outgrown girls who wear masks and secretly rejoice at my misfortunes. I have outgrown shrinking myself for boys who are intimidated by my intelligence and outspoken nature. I have outgrown friends who cannot celebrate my accomplishments. I have outgrown people who conveniently disappear whenever life gets a little dark. I have outgrown those who take pleasure in gossiping and spreading negativity. I have outgrown dull, meaningless conversations that feel forced. I have outgrown those who don't take a stand against ignorance and injustice. I have outgrown trying to please everyone. I have outgrown society constantly telling me I'm not beautiful, smart, or worthy enough. I have outgrown trying to fix every little flaw. I have outgrown my tendency to fill my mind with self-doubt and insecurity. I have outgrown trying to find reasons not to love myself. I have outgrown anything and anyone that does not enrich the essence of my soul. I have outgrown many things, and I've never felt freer.

It is not necessary or advantageous to give your opinion about everything to everyone. It is not your job to be a form of cheap entertainment for those around you. This is a trap that is very easy to fall into and is the downfall of many people. While it is certainly okay to chat with your buddies or other people about meaningless things in order to be affable, you should be careful of your conversation even on such relaxed occasions. It is all too easy to get carried away with your conversation and express opinions which can be offensive and used against you at a later time. Be genial and social, but at the same time be aware and thoughtful concerning your private beliefs.

Whenever I thought about having a conversation with [the widow], my words felt like confederate currency to me, worthless, ineffectual, meaningless, and of no use to anyone in the present day. No matter how many portraits of Jefferson Davis I placed on the table before her, she would never feel like my debt was paid, my obligation met. [We] could never be even. No matter how fast I talked or how eloquently I crafted the English language, my words couldn't turn back the clock, reverse the bullets, and reunite her with her husband, the only actions that would truly right my mistake. I was a writer and I believed in the power of words, but my words were as useless now as the defunct currency of the Old South.

Sometimes Cookies Are the Best Medicine For hospice patients at death’s door, big existential conversations aren’t always the needed medicine. One oddly powerful alternative is baking cookies together. “Just the basic joy of smelling a cookie. It smells freaking great. [And it’s like the snowball.] You’re rewarded for being alive and in the moment. Smelling a cookie is not on behalf of some future state. It’s great in the moment, by itself, on behalf of nothing. And this is another thing back to art. Art for its own sake. Art and music and dance. Part of its poignancy is its purposelessness, and just delighting in a wacky fact of perhaps a meaningless universe and how remarkable that is. One way for all of us to live until we’re actually dead is to prize those little moments.

Honestly, I’m kind of happy having permission to dive right into more interesting territory because I have a very real allergy to small talk. I don’t want to discuss jobs and the weather and how people’s commutes are. Introverts tend to hate chit-chat (it’s an awkward social interaction, but also meaningless and unrewarding), but this kind of enriching conversation that Mark is referring to is incredibly rare and hard to come by, something I had already found out on the streets of London. We’re told that we can engineer conversations to be more emotional and interesting by understanding that we all have a ‘Surface Self’ and a ‘Deep Self’. The Surface Self talks about the weather, facts, what we had for dinner, our plans for the weekend. The Deep Self talks about what these these actually mean to us and how we feel about them.

You must control bugs,” I say. “Bugs no eat fruit,” it answers. In other words, how can you control an animal except with fruit? “Change sap for bugs. Like this.” I show a chemical. “Sap will control animals.” “Bugs no eat fruit.” “Bugs drink sap.” “Yes,” it says. “Bugs no eat fruit.” “Change sap for bugs because bugs drink sap, no eat fruit.” “Bugs no eat fruit.” I realize that we are related plants, both bamboos, in fact, and our shared physiology is the only reason I can have a conversation of any complexity. The hedge along the river is too small to have many sentient roots. The presence of other snow vines triggers an aggressive growth, but this hedge has lived alone and is content to lead a manicured little life parasitizing its aspens and putting down more guard roots than it needs, thus serving the humans without realizing it. It has no need for intelligence, none at all. “Change sap for bugs,” I repeat, hoping that repetition will of itself prove persuasive. “Big animals eat bugs.” “Bugs no eat fruit.” “Big animals eat bugs.” “Big animals eat bugs,” the snow vine repeats. I have made progress. “Yes,” I say. “Change sap for bugs.” “Big animals eat bugs.” “Yes. Change sap for bugs. Like this.” “Bugs eat sap,” it says. “Bugs are pests.” “Bugs are good. Big animals eat bugs like fruit.” The snow vine stammers some meaningless chemical compounds and finally says, “Bugs are like fruit.” This is very significant progress. “Bugs are like fruit,” I agree. “Bugs eat sap. Change sap. Sap will control two animals.” “Sap will control bugs. Big animals eat bugs.” “Yes. You must change sap for bugs and animals.” “I will change sap for bugs and animals.” At last! “Yes. Change sap like this.” I deliver some prototype chemicals.

Also, he’s deathly afraid of hearing something along the lines of “You know, kid, we just had a certain difference of opinion” as the beginning and end of conversation. He’s afraid because that’s exactly the kind of explanation he usually gets, and it makes him depressed. It interferes with his need to feel grown up. He has all the reasons to be afraid right now. The temptation to get rid of him with a pair of meaningless sentences is overwhelming. The explanations will only invite more questions, and then eventually I will run out of answers. But Smoker is impossible to get rid of. He opens his palm and all of himself is right there on it, and he just hands that to you. You can’t throw away this naked soul, pretending like you don’t understand what it is you’ve been offered and why. That’s where his power comes from, out of this devastating openness. I’ve never met anyone like that before.

In a conversation with a British embassy official that occurred at about this time, quoted in a memorandum later filed with the foreign office in London, Diels delivered a monologue on his own moral unease: "The infliction of physical punishment is not every man's job, and naturally we were only too glad to recruit men who were prepared to show no squeamishness at their task. Unfortunately, we knew nothing about the Freudian side of the business, and it was only after a number of instances of unnecessary flogging and meaningless cruelty that I tumbled to the fact that my organization had been attracting all the sadists in Germany and Austria without my knowledge for some time past. It had also been attracting unconscious sadists, i.e. men who did not know themselves that they had sadist leanings until they took part in a flogging. And finally it had been actually creating sadists. For it seems that corporal chastisement ultimately arouses sadistic leanings in apparently normal men and women. Freud might explain it.

We are tempted (and encouraged) to believe that the kingdom of God spreads throughout the earth by presenting the gospel, through some pat formula, to strangers. That doesn't happen very often. The gospel spread throughout the world of the first centuries by conversations between close friends and relatives, business associates and neighbors-people with whom the passionate Christians already had personal contact. So today the Church grows and expands, and people come to maturity in Christ nearly always through the influence of people they already know and trust, like you. Even the most shy person among us talks to people every day. Most of that talk is idle chatter, not very useful for the advancement of God's kingdom. Every one of those less-than-redemptive conversations is a lost opportunity for extending the Lordship of Jesus. However, if we could learn to enhance the quality of our conversations, we could improve our ability to do what Jesus commanded-make disciples. We could turn that meaningless chatter into a means of God's grace, helping our friends become all God intends for them and enriching their lives (and our own) in the process.

The toy is the lodestar of the child’s survival. The consequences of his failure to get his toy are disastrous. That Hoffman’s—and anyone else’s—pursuit of glory operates in the same way is why one man’s fear of failure and striving for perfection is significant, why it is not a matter of bourgeois decadence, in a world where a million Syrian children are in exile and starving. The Syrian child, the child lacking his toy, and the actor fear for their survival. How will they survive? And how will they medicate their fear? I suppose this is the moment where I am supposed to say that fear can be conquered by trusting in the risen Lord or whatever. But I would just as well save the reflex. I would just as well not waste meaningless words to counter the assertion about which Hoffman was exactly right: this world is damn terrifying. It is easy enough to say that fear is an illusion or something trumped-up when you don’t read the newspaper or have a frank conversation with your friend. How could one not be scared in a world where your birth is the beginning of your preparation for death? This is a world of cancer and hunger and beheadings and layoffs and heartbreak and stabbings and innumerable and head-spinning and creative forms of violence and lovelessness. This is a world where people are still burnt alive. That is, in this world there are people who must endure, for several hundred seconds, the sensation of a hot iron enveloping the body until they die of bleeding, inhalation, or organ failure. What sane person would not be terrified in such a world?

A Diarrhea Of Words And A Constipation Of Thoughts." - Meaningless conversation.

Ullman believes that schizophrenics try to convey their sense of unbroken wholeness in the way they view space and time. Studies have shown that schizophrenics often treat the converse of any relation as identical to the relation. For instance, according to the schizophrenic's way of thinking, saying that “event A follows event B” is the same as saying “event B follows event A.” The idea of one event following another in any kind of time sequence is meaningless, for all points in time are viewed equal. The same is true of spatial relations. If a man's head is above his shoulders, then his shoulders are also above his head. Like the image in a piece of holographic film, things no longer have precise locations, and spatial relationships cease to have meaning.

Well do I remember the first night we met, how you questioned my opinion that first impressions are perfect. You were right to do so, of course, but even then I suspected what I’ve come to believe most passionately these past weeks: from that first moment, I knew you were a dangerous woman, and I was in great peril of falling in love.” She thought she should say something witty here. She said, “Really?” “I know it seems absurd. At first, you and I were the last match possible. I cannot name the moment when my feelings altered. I recall a stab of pain the afternoon we played croquet, seeing you with Captain East, wishing like a jealous fool that I could be the man you would laugh with. Seeing you tonight…how you look…your eyes…my wits are scattered by your beauty and I cannot hide my feelings any longer. I feel little hope that you have come to feel as I do now, but hope I must.” He placed his gloved hand on top of hers, as he had in the park her second day. It seemed years ago. “You alone have the power to save me this suffering. I desire nothing more than to call you Jane and be the man always by your side.” His voice was dry, cracking with earnestness. “Please tell me if I have any hope.” After a few moments of silence, he popped back out of his chair again. His imitation of a lovesick man in agony was very well done and quite appealing. Jane was mermerized. Mr. Nobley began to test the length of the room again. When his pacing reached a climax, he stopped to stare at her with clenched desperation. “Your reserve is a knife. Can you not tell me, Miss Erstwhile, if you love me in return?” Oh, perfect, perfect moment. But even as her heart pounded, she felt a sense of loss, sand so fine she couldn’t keep it from pouring through her fingers. Mr. Nobley was perfect, but he was just a game. It all was. Even Martin’s meaningless kisses were preferable to the phony perfection. She was craving anything real--bad smells and stupid men, missed trains and tedious jobs. But she remembered that mixed up in the ugly parts of reality were also those true moments of grace--peaches in September, honest laughter, perfect light. Real men. She was ready to embrace it now. She was in control. Things were going to be good. She stared at the hallway and thought of Martin. He’d been the first real man in a long time who’d made her feel pretty again, whom she’d allowed herself to fall for. And not the Jane-patended-oft-failed-all-or-nothing-heartbreak-love, but just the sky-blue-lean-back-happy-calm-giddy-infatuation. She looked at Mr. Nobley and back at the hallway, feeling like a pillow pulled in two, her stuffing coming out. “I don’t know. I want to, I really do…” She was replaying his proposal in her mind--the emotion behind it had felt skin-tingling real, but the words had sounded scripted, secondhand, previously worn. He was so delicious, the way he looked at her, the fun of their conversations, the simple rapture of the touch of his hand. But…but he was an actor. She would have liked to play into this moment, to live it wholeheartedly in order to put it behind her. An unease stopped her. The silence stretched, and she could hear him shift his feet. The lower tones of the dancing music trembled through the walls, muffled and sad, stripped of vigor and all high prancing notes. Surreal, Jane thought. That’s what you call this.

There is a perception that small talk is ‘meaningless’ and ‘useless’ when the truth is that it is often an important component of human interaction. You’ll get a clear understanding after reading my story; some years back, I met a celebrity in an unexpected location two different times, both times he was someone I

Why are we so afraid of silence? Teenagers cannot study without their records; they walk along the street with their transistors. Grownups are as bad if not worse; we turn on the TV or the radio the minute we come into the house or start the car. The pollution of noise in our cities is as destructive as the pollution of air. We show our fear of silence in our conversation: I wonder if the orally-minded Elizabethan's used "um" and "er" the way we do? And increasingly prevalent is what my husband calls an articulated pause: "You know." We interject "you know" meaninglessly into every sentence, in order that the flow of our speech should not be interrupted by such a terrifying thing as silence.

Nor did he regard his partial deafness as an impediment. He claimed that the deafness was actually an advantage, freeing him from time-wasting small talk and giving him undisturbed time to “think out my problems.” Late in life he would say that he was fortunate to have been spared “all the foolish conversation and other meaningless sounds that normal people hear.

The liturgy became excruciatingly boring. It dragged; it seemed a meaningless chore. I realized that what I was experiencing had been experienced, and endured, by every monk in that choir. And knowing that helped me to recognize this experience of tedium as a grace, a gift that not only allowed me to better understand the realities of monastic life but also provided an important step in my religious conversion. I was a guest, and didn’t have to go to choir with the monks; why, then, did I feel compelled to go? To hear the poetry of the psalms, as it turned out. And to learn that this was reason enough. The experience revealed conversion to me as largely a matter of trusting one’s instincts, even when reason cries foul. It is remaining certain that one’s progress through difficult terrain is heading somewhere, even when boredom and despair conspire to make it all seem worthless.

Find peace in the silence few seek Don’t talk if you have nothing to say Walk away from meaningless conversation Don’t be afraid of quietness, embrace it

This exchange is what an unconditional surrender sounds like. It is the ultimate form of diplomatic coercion. The city of Berlin had been turned into rubble. The defeated country was at the mercy of its enemy. Coercion was the means by which unconditional surrender was obtained. Under the circumstances, diplomatic prowess was meaningless. Only military superiority mattered. A few hours after the unsuccessful negotiation attempt, Chancellor Joseph Goebbels committed suicide. On the next day, 2 May 1945, Gen. Hans Krebs, Chief of the General Staff (OKH), also committed suicide. The above conversation is noteworthy for two things: (1) The Russian side had the power to exterminate the German side, and (2) there was absolutely no negotiation or diplomacy. Valeriano and Maness would do well to review the conversation between Krebs and Chuikov. In a future war the victorious side will dictate the peace to the defeated side in the exact manner described above. This stems from the nature of modern weapons. Such weapons are made to produce decisive results. They are made to engender capitulation and stop all arguments, all negotiations, all half-measures. Atomic bombs were used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The result was the surrender of Japan. Diplomatic power is weak when compared to atomic power. In fact, the illusions of diplomatic power must work against those states that favor negotiation over and above measures strictly undertaken to assure military success.

What happened? It took Gibbon six volumes to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, so I shan’t embark on that. But thinking about this almost incredible episode does tell one something about the nature of civilisation. It shows that however complex and solid it seems, it is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed. What are its enemies? Well, first of all fear – fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague and famine, that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees or even planning next year’s crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren’t question anything or change anything. The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence. And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity. There is a poem by the modern Greek poet, Cavafy, in which he imagines the people of an antique town like Alexandria waiting every day for the barbarians to come and sack the city. Finally the barbarians move off somewhere else and the city is saved; but the people are disappointed – it would have been better than nothing. Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity – enough to provide a little leisure. But, far more, it requires confidence – confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers. The way in which the stones of the Pont du Gard are laid is not only a triumph of technical skill, but shows a vigorous belief in law and discipline. Vigour, energy, vitality: all the great civilisations – or civilising epochs – have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversation and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation, but they are not what make a civilisation, and a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid. So if one asks why the civilisation of Greece and Rome collapsed, the real answer is that it was exhausted.

Madeleine taught us that we don't abandon spiritual habits just because we're in a season of struggle and doubt. We keep attending to those practices, day in and day out. This is not the same as legalism, in which we obey certain commands in some misguided attempt to be on God's good side. Instead, it requires deep humility and trust to acknowledge, "I don't understand this right now. Everything feels dark and meaningless. But there's more going on than I understand; and somehow God has promised to show up in the midst of these daily habits. So here goes." Prayer, worship, reading Scripture, breaking bread in community, spiritual counsel, and conversation with spiritual friends: all those are ways we put one foot in front of the other, even in the dark. These are the ways we practice believing.

In long conversations with his chief adviser, himself a public relations man, both Nixon and H. R. Haldeman showed an indifference to truth that goes beyond cynicism-an indifference that can be explained only on the assumption that the concept of truth, for men exercising irresponsible powers, has lost most of its meaning. "I think we have to find a way to make statements, " Nixon said at one point, " T . . any kind of statement ... as general as possible . . . just so somebody can say that ... a statement has been made through the President upon which he has based his statement to the effect that he has confidence in his staff. . . . I didn't do this. . I didn t do that, da da da da, da da da da, da da da da, da da da da. Haldeman didn't do this, Erlichman didn't do that. Colson didn't do that. " Haldeman's reply-"1 wouldn't say that this is the whole truth"-evinces a lingering capacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood but does not alter the fact that words chosen purely for their public effect quickly lose all reference to reality. Political discussion founded on such principles degenerates into meaningless babble, even when it is carried on behind closed doors.

What happened? It took Gibbon six volumes to describe the decline and fall of the Roman Empire, so I shan’t embark on that. But thinking about this almost incredible episode does tell one something about the nature of civilisation. It shows that however complex and solid it seems, it is actually quite fragile. It can be destroyed. What are its enemies? Well, first of all fear – fear of war, fear of invasion, fear of plague and famine, that make it simply not worthwhile constructing things, or planting trees or even planning next year’s crops. And fear of the supernatural, which means that you daren’t question anything or change anything. The late antique world was full of meaningless rituals, mystery religions, that destroyed self-confidence. And then exhaustion, the feeling of hopelessness which can overtake people even with a high degree of material prosperity. There is a poem by the modern Greek poet, Cavafy, in which he imagines the people of an antique town like Alexandria waiting every day for the barbarians to come and sack the city. Finally the barbarians move off somewhere else and the city is saved; but the people are disappointed – it would have been better than nothing. Of course, civilisation requires a modicum of material prosperity – enough to provide a little leisure. But, far more, it requires confidence – confidence in the society in which one lives, belief in its philosophy, belief in its laws, and confidence in one’s own mental powers. The way in which the stones of the Pont du Gard are laid is not only a triumph of technical skill, but shows a vigorous belief in law and discipline. Vigour, energy, vitality: all the great civilisations – or civilising epochs – have had a weight of energy behind them. People sometimes think that civilisation consists in fine sensibilities and good conversation and all that. These can be among the agreeable results of civilisation, but they are not what make a civilisation, and a society can have these amenities and yet be dead and rigid. So

Its not that people want to get hurt again. Its that they want to master a situation where they felt helpless. "Repetition compulsion" Maybe this time, the unconscious imagines, I can go back and heal that wound from long ago, by engaging with somebody familiar- but new. The truth is that they reopen the wounds and feel even more inadequate and unlovable." "He may be resistant to acknowledging it now, but I welcome his resistance because resistance is a clue to where the crux of the work lies; it signals what a therapist needs to pay attention to." "Conversion disorder: this is a condition in which a person's anxiety is "converted" into a neurologic conditions such as paralysis, balance issues, incontinence, deafness, tremors, or seizures." "People with conversion disorder aren't faking it- that’s called factitious disorder. People with factitious disorder have a need to be thought of as sick and intentionally go to great lengths to appear ill." "Interestingly, conversion disorder tends to be more prevalent in cultures with strict rules and few opportunities for emotional expression." "Ultracrepidarianism, which means "the habit of giving opinions and advice on matters outside of one's knowledge or competence" "Every decision they make is based on two things: fear and love. Therapy strives to teach you how to tell the two apart." "if you are talking that much, you cant be listening" and its variant, you have two ears and one mouth; there's a reason for that ratio)" "To feel better now, anytime, anywhere, within seconds" Why are we essentially outsourcing the thing that defines uses people? Was it that people couldn’t tolerate being alone or that they couldn’t tolerate being with other people?" "The four ultimate concerns are death, isolation, freedom, and meaningless" "Flooded: meaning one person is in overdrive, and when people feel flooded is best to wait a beat. The person needs a few minutes for his nervous system to reset before he can take anything in." "Developmental stage models: Freud, Jung, Erikson, Piaget and Maslow

I’ve had plenty of meaningless dates and pointless conversations. This woman was never pointless. She was everything.

The wide-eyed professor lectured, on the verge of tears, and when class ended, the students closed their notebooks shut and asked of her plans for the weekend, which was answered politely, but with a tinge of sadness, for the professor feared her personhood, which had in her lesson plan existed truly only minutes ago, was already being reduced to the small, meaningless matters of tomorrow.

Avoid triggering subjects and derail catastrophic conversations. Narcissists enjoy using circular conversations, meaningless word salad and countless contradictions to mess with your mind, deflect your attention off their abuse and keep you off balance. They'll deny saying something, they'll contradict something they said earlier, they'll bring in irrational arguments and they'll continue to break your boundaries in a way that leaves you inevitably frustrated. This keeps the focus off the narcissist's actual behavior and leaves you wasting precious energy and time trying to figure out what's actually being said. Think of it as looking through garbage trying to extract gems. Except, there are no gems. You're just becoming a hoarder of the narcissist's useless "crazy-making" tactics.

We had gone back to San Diego for her last months, and I slept with Gaga while my mother spent most of her time over at the hospital. Early each morning, as the planes started up their infernal diving, the phone would ring and a conversation ensue, after which I would ask if my other grandmother was still living. The question grew to be reflexive and almost meaningless, just part of the daily routine, until the Sunday that Gaga shocked me by shaking her head, putting down the phone, and breaking into tears.

There was no satisfying explanation for why Andrew [Haswell Green] and Samuel [Tilden] found themselves falling into a friendship. It was simply a matter of attraction, and instinct, and need, as it always is. Those factors and a hundred tiny, meaningless conversations that gradually accumulated into layers of familiarity.

I miss that, the rush of endorphins that would strike me when I liked someone and the frantic patter of my heart when I would hear my phone ding with a text notification. More than anything, I miss having someone I can talk to about anything and everything, engaging in dumb, meaningless conversations that provide nothing but the comfort of having someone there.

Every father is the perfect man to his son; closer to gods in perfection and divinity. But here, as he was being unflinchingly honest in his response and baring his very human imperfections, he was beginning to appear more of an imperfectly beautiful human and less of a depressingly perfect god. The conversations were so engaging that we went from sounding like raunchy teenagers, to erotic novelists, to perfect anti-socials. To being two unpretentious adults involved in a man-to-man talk. Finally, to being two independent souls unfettered by the mundane world and its constrictive definitions of relationships. The man was to become my muse. The theme. The story; its meaning and meaninglessness. The character, the audience. The admirer, the critic. The patron, and the beneficiary.

Silence reigned in the car as the three individuals united by a specific purpose, sharing similar opinions about the inexpediency of meaningless interactions, maintained placidity during the peregrination. The picturesque scenes compensated for the lack of conversation and the car’s entry into Port Bognolot provided them breathtaking views of the closest countryside to Paris, La Campagne a’ Paris, embedded in the hills of the locale. Green creepers, lush green plants, and bushy trees adorned the colorful houses on either side of the streets of the small village, rejuvenating their eyes grown tired from viewing the Hausmannian architecture.

Some Māyāvādī scholars argue that Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam was not compiled by Śrī Vyāsadeva. And some of them suggest that this book is a modern creation written by someone named Vopadeva. In order to refute such meaningless arguments, Śrī Śrīdhara Svāmī points out that there is reference to the Bhāgavatam in many of the oldest Purāṇas. This first śloka of the Bhāgavatam begins with the Gāyatrī mantra. There is reference to this in the Matsya Purāṇa, which is the oldest Purāṇa. In that Purāṇa, it is said with reference to the Gāyatrī mantra in the Bhāgavatam that there are many narrations of spiritual instructions beginning with the Gāyatrī mantra. And there is the history of Vṛtrāsura. Anyone who makes a gift of this great work on a full moon day attains to the highest perfection of life by returning to Godhead. There is reference to the Bhāgavatam in other Purāṇas also, where it is clearly stated that this work was finished in twelve cantos, which include eighteen thousand ślokas. In the Padma Purāṇa also there is reference to the Bhāgavatam in a conversation between Gautama and Mahārāja Ambarīṣa. The king was advised therein to read regularly Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam if he desired liberation from material bondage. Under the circumstances, there is no doubt about the authority of the Bhāgavatam.

Amidst the empty conversations and meaningless hot air jabbered by the untethered tourists and sightseers, he alone walked on with his feet stuck firmly to the ground. His slender frame anchored to a spine of steel, he was a rock against the waves of humanity.

We were at work in a trench. The dawn was grey around us; grey was the sky above; grey the snow in the pale light of dawn; grey the rags in which my fellow prisoners were clad, and grey their faces. I was again conversing silently with my wife, or perhaps I was struggling to find the reason for my sufferings, my slow dying. In a last violent protest against the hopelessness of imminent death, I sensed my spirit piercing through the enveloping gloom. I felt it transcend that hopeless, meaningless world, and from somewhere I heard a victorious “Yes” in answer to my question of the existence of an ultimate purpose. At that moment a light was lit in a distant farmhouse, which stood on the horizon as if painted there, in the midst of the miserable grey of a dawning morning in Bavaria. “Et lux in tenebris lucet” — and the light shineth in the darkness. For hours I stood hacking at the icy ground. The guard passed by, insulting me, and once again I communed with my beloved. More and more I felt that she was present, that she was with me; I had the feeling that I was able to touch her, able to stretch out my hand and grasp hers. The feeling was very strong: she was there. Then, at that very moment, a bird flew down silently and perched just in front of me, on the heap of soil which I had dug up from the ditch, and looked steadily at me.

When we routinely succumb to immediate gratification or live to protect and project an image, we become angry with ourselves and ultimately feel empty inside. To quiet the unconscious gnawing that says, I don't like me, we do whatever we can to feel good. We long to love ourselves, but instead we lose ourselves. Unable to invest in our own well-being, we spiral downward to the hollow, self-destructive refuge of activities that take us away from the pain: excessive eating, alcohol or drug abuse, and meaningless diversions and excursions. These ethereal delights mask our self-contempt, and because the happiness we seek instead results in greater pain, we descend further into despair - and into hiding.

Don't mistake my love of solitude for loneliness, I prefer the hum of my thoughts over the din of meaningless conversations.

Someone pumps sentences into my brain, long-forgotten images from childhood; meaningless objects and conversations peel layers from my heart. I am again a river faun, paralyzed by longing for a river nymph. I walk through wolframic space, my mouth and nose threaded with wire, and whenever I deviate from my course, I feel a sharp pain in my jaws.

Fritz Perls actually made three technical distinctions for poisonous assignment of value: chickenshit, bullshit, and elephant shit. Chickenshit is a normal greeting that doesn't mean what it says, as in “Hello, how are you?” “I'm fine, how are you?” Bullshit is normal conversation in which people are simply whiling away the time with meaningless abstractions and generalizations. Elephant shit is any discussion of Gestalt theory or of Radical Honesty.

You are living. As soon as you introduce the question “how to live?” you have made of life a problem. “How” to live has made life meaningless. The moment you ask “how,” you turn to someone for answers, becoming dependent.

Any attempt to tell the story of Lewis’s conversion has to try and relate the events of his outer and inner worlds. Lewis presents himself as doing this in Surprised by Joy, telling the story of two quite different—yet interconnected—worlds: his external worlds of English schools and Oxford University, and his internal world of yearning for “Joy,” racked for so long by a tension between the rational and the imaginative. On the one side a many-islanded sea of poetry and myth; on the other a glib and shallow “rationalism.” Nearly all that I loved I believed to be imaginary; nearly all that I believed to be real I thought grim and meaningless.[306]

We all walk in silence for a minute, just listening to the breeze and bustle of the campus around us. It's a friendship like this that I never thought I would find, people with whom you can share the silence and not have to fill it with meaningless conversation. Sometimes their mere presence is just enough, my three nonbiological big sisters.

To wake people up.  To break the spell of autopilot.  Aim to get that smile that they don’t normally let loose. Or to make them comment, “Hm that’s a good question, I never thought about that!”  When you rescue people from the purgatory of meaningless small talk, you’re doing a good deed.  So get to the real stuff that makes them wake up and care.

Time seemed to have stretched and become meaningless anyway, its passage blurred by endless drinks and meandering conversations.

Was there anything in it?” she asked, not bothering to wipe the tear tracing the rim of her nose. “Our summer here, all those long walks and even longer conversations? When you kissed me that night, did it mean anything to you?” When he did not answer, she took three paces in his direction. “I know how proud you must be of those enigmatic silences, but I believe I deserve an answer.” She stood between his icy silence and the heated aura of the fire. Scorched on one side, bitterly cold on the other— like a slice of toast someone had forgotten to turn. “What sort of answer would you like to hear?” “An honest one.” “Are you certain? It’s my experience that young ladies vastly prefer fictions. Little stories, like Portia’s gothic novel.” “I am as fond of a good tale as anyone,” she replied, “but in this instance, I wish to know the truth.” “So you say. Let us try an experiment, shall we?” He rose from his chair and sauntered toward her, his expression one of jaded languor. His every movement a negotiation between aristocratic grace and sheer brute strength. Power. He radiated power in every form— physical, intellectual, sensual— and he knew it. He knew that she sensed it. The fire was unbearably warm now. Blistering, really. Sweat beaded at her hairline, but Cecily would not retreat. “I could tell you,” he said darkly, seductively, “that I kissed you that night because I was desperate with love for you, overcome with passion, and that the color of my ardor has only deepened with time and separation. And that when I lay on a battlefield bleeding my guts out, surrounded by meaningless death and destruction, I remembered that kiss and was able to believe that there was something of innocence and beauty in this world, and it was you.” He took her hand and brought it to his lips. Almost. Warm breath caressed her fingertips. “Do you like that answer?” She gave a breathless nod. She was a fool; she couldn’t help it. “You see?” He kissed her fingers. “Young ladies prefer fictions.” “You are a cad.” Cecily wrenched her hand away and balled it into a fist. “An arrogant, insufferable cad.” “Yes, yes. Now we come to the truth. Shall I give you an honest answer, then? That I kissed you that night for no other reason than that you looked uncommonly pretty and fresh, and though I doubted my ability to vanquish Napoleon, it was some balm to my pride to conquer you, to feel you tremble under my touch? And that now I return from war, to find everything changed, myself most of all. I scarcely recognize my surroundings, except . . .” He cupped her chin in his hand and lightly framed her jaw between his thumb and forefinger. “Except Cecily Hale still looks at me with stars in her eyes, the same as she ever did. And when I touch her, she still trembles.” Oh. She was trembling. He swept his thumb across her cheek, and even her hair shivered. “And suddenly . . .” His voice cracked. Some unrehearsed emotion pitched his dispassionate drawl into a warm, expressive whisper. “Suddenly, I find myself determined to keep this one thing constant in my universe. Forever.” -Cecily & Luke

Why one reads is very important. If you don’t have a good reason, if it’s just for escape, that’s all right, it’s like taking junk, it’s meaningless. It’s kind of an insult to yourself. Like modern conversation—it’s used to keep people away from one another, because people don’t feel assaulted by conversation so much as silence. People have to make conversation in order to fill up this void. Void is terrifying to most people. We can’t have a direct confrontation with somebody in silence—because what you’re really having is a full and more meaningful confrontation. It

I pondered the significance of my personal annihilation for the next several months, facing down an existentialist abyss of oblivion and meaningless within me. Eventually, through some unconscious process of recalibration, I returned to my basic attitude that all is as it should be. There is no other way I can describe it: no mountaintop conversion or flash of deep insight, but a sentiment that suffuses my life. I wake up each morning to find myself in a world full of mystery and beauty. And I'm profoundly thankful for the wonder of it all. Here I am, a highly organized pattern of mass and energy, one of seven billion, insignificant in any objective accounting of the world. And in short while I will case to exist. What am I to the universe? Practically nothing. Yet the certainty of my death makes my life more significant. My joy in life, in my children, my love to dogs, running and climbing, books and music, the cobalt blue sky, are meaningful because I will come to an end. And that is as it should be. I do not know what will come afterward, if there is an afterward in the usual sense of the world, but whatever it is, I know in my bones that everything is for the best.

Here, where several years of homogeneous memories are offered to her eyes, my memory revives, depending on where I walk, twenty years of an adult existence in which such various periods have followed each other that I have difficulty making them mine. How could I have been so poor at one period and at another so rich? How so much alone, then so happy, then abandoned again? At every intersection of the city, at the corner of the least-frequented streets, on the facades of many houses, wretched or luxurious, fragments of my past have remained, clinging, stuck. Fewer memories of love than one might think. Banal bits of conversations, meaningless gestures, wrecks all the more moving in that I cannot attach them to anything important in my life.

Paulo Coelho Oprah: One of the running themes throughout The Alchemist is one of my favorite all-time quotes. And that is, “When you want something, all the Universe conspires in helping you to get it.” I think that’s what actually conspired in helping me be here today. I’ve been trying to do this interview for ten years. But where did that idea, those words, that theme, come from? Paulo Coelho: Well, what I experienced in my life is that when I really wanted something, I always got it. Positive and negative. Because the Universe does not think. You have this subconscious mind that sometimes is attracting tragedy. Attracting bad things, you know? Because you want to be a victim. Because to be a victim is to justify a lot of frustrations and failures in your life. The Universe is helping you. You want to be successful. The Universe is helping you. Oprah: Based on how you think, how you truly think, consciously and subconsciously. Do you believe every person has what you call a personal legend? Paulo: I’m 100 percent convinced. Which is totally different than I believe that every person is going to fulfil his or her personal legend. All right? Oprah: Okay. I would agree. Every person has a personal legend. First of all, what is a personal legend? Paulo: It is the reason that you are here. It’s as simple as this. You know? You are here to honor something called the miracle of life. You can be here to fulfil your hours and days with something that is meaningless. But you know that you have a reason to be here. It is the only thing that gives you enthusiasm. And you know when you are betraying your personal legend, when you are doing something without enthusiasm. And, worse, you know that you have this good excuse. I’m not ready. Which is just an excuse. You know? No, I’m not ready. I have to wait for the right moment. You know, now I have to feed my family. Come on. Your family wants to see you happy. Your daughter. Your husband. Your wife. They don’t want to see you there sitting in a work that you hate. Even if it gives you tons of money. Oprah: Okay. So you’ve just given a really key clue to how to know you’re pursuing your personal legend. It is that which in life gives you enthusiasm. You call it personal legend. I call it personal calling. Everybody has a reason why you’re here. You’re called here. And you know if you’re on the path to it whether you’re enthusiastic about it or not. That’s how you know. Paulo: One hundred percent. We know our reason to be here. We don’t know if we are taking the right steps towards it. But if we are honest enough, God is going to guide you. Even if you take some wrong steps, you know? God will recognize that you have a pure heart. And He puts you back on track. Oprah: Because Life rises up to meet you. Paulo: Absolutely.

I enjoy my own company so much. It's refreshing not having to participate in meaningless conversations and forced relationships.

Evaluate your life in its totality! We all waste so much time doing meaningless bullshit. We burn hours on social media and watching television, which by the end of the year would add up to entire days and weeks if you tabulated time like you do your taxes. You should, because if you knew the truth you’d deactivate your Facebook account STAT, and cut your cable. When you find yourself having frivolous conversations or becoming ensnared in activities that don’t better you in any way, move the fuck on!

My secret name for the annex was "the hen-coop". Glued to the nesting boxes of their favorite wicker chairs, the inmates sat click-clacking knitting needles, hatching balls of wool, their silence pierced only by an occasional frail voice of meaningless conversation. Flapping imaginary wings, "Cock-a-doodle-dooing," and "Chook-chooking", I ran through crowing, but not so loudly as to frighten them or be rude. I see now the old women's pinched faces, stiff and severe as the potted aspidistras beside them, only masked despair. With nothing to do but breathe, they knitted and crocheted memories and lost dreams into tangible objects. On the hour as though on cue, the old chickens roused, froze suddenly still, before exchanging smiles and nodding some shared secret to one another as the wild music from Bruges' church bells rang out the time from the many belfries, rattling teh panes and vibrating through the "hen house" with deep echoes. And I'd leap to the wild music - a dancing puppet pulled by unseen strings.